More than three years after the release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (opens in a new tab)revealed Piranha Games president Russ Bullock in an interview with NoGutsNoGalaxy (opens in a new tab) podcast that a new single player Mechwarrior game is currently in development.
“We’re still working on MechWarrior, which has surprised me a bit, that we’ve been able to work on it for so long, which is great,” Bullock said. “And everyone knows that of course we have DLC 4 for MechWarrior 5.
“And there’s another MechWarrior game in development at Piranha. I’ll just say it’s not MechWarrior Online 2, it’s not the successor to MechWarrior (opens in a new tab)Online [which entered open beta in 2012 before releasing in 2013]It’s not online PvP, think of it more online with MechWarrior 5, but a standalone game, standalone product.”
Bullock said the new game will be released for PC and consoles, and will follow “more of a single-player cooperative kind of path.” However, there’s no indication as to what era the game will be set in or which faction it will focus on, and Bullock cautioned that the official reveal may not happen until the fall of this year. That leaves plenty of time for speculation, and in my head (given certain events in MechWarrior 5, which I won’t spoil) I feel like something involves the Clan invasion. (opens in a new tab)3049 ion (opens in a new tab) might not be a bad guess.
Bullock also said in the NGNG interview that he is also interested in following up on MechWarrior Online, but noted that he faces additional challenges, including the need for a license extension: Piranha currently holds the rights to the MechWarrior license until 2025, but you need “more clue than that” for a full MWO2.
“You’re not going to do a MechWarrior Online 2 if your license might end in 2025,” Bullock said. “We would have to know that we have a five-year minimum once the game is done, so we probably need an extension to 2030.”
In an email sent to PC Gamer, Bullock confirmed that the new single-player MechWarrior game will be released in 2024. The fourth DLC for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, called Rise of Rasalhague (opens in a new tab)is scheduled to come out on January 26.